Factors affecting data quality of online questionnaires: Issues and metrics for sensory and consumer research

"I find it hard to change poor food habits": Measuring food choice motives in an emerging economy

Food choices are driven by an array of motives that have been approached, determined and quantified in a number of ways, mainly in developed countries. The objective of this study was to better understand the motives behind food choices in an emerging economy by collecting information from urban people in South Africa in a series of four studies. (1) Items generated through focus group discussions with low, middle and high income participants by Magano et al. (2023) were checked for content and face validity and (2) 123 statements derived from them were evaluated by 621 respondents. After exploratory factor analysis (EFA), 46 statements best representing the motivational space were (3) presented to another group of respondents (n = 259). Here, the EFA resulted in a 31-item, 7-factor food choice questionnaire for emerging economies (FCQ-EE) which was (4) confirmed by a nationwide sample (n = 814) and further refined to an alternative 19-item, 7-factor solution. The emerging factors were: Healthy eating constraints (HEC), Frugality (FR), Emotional eating (EE), Meat appeal (MA), Weather (WE), Quality seeking (QS) and Cooking constraints (CC). Whether used in the 31-item or 19-item format, this set of statements highlights factors underlying food choice in an emerging economy and offers a way to study their importance in similar contexts. Further research is needed to show the extent to which these factors can predict actual food choices.

Behavioural determinants of healthy and environmentally friendly diets in French university students

Although encouraging the shift toward sustainable diets in young adults is a major challenge to preserve population and planet health, the precursors of sustainable diets in this population remain unknown. This study aimed to identify the behavioural determinants of healthier and more environmentally friendly diets among university students. A sample of 582 French university students reported their food consumption using an online 125-item food frequency questionnaire. The nutritional quality (adherence to French recommendations, sPNNS-GS2) and the greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) of students' diets were calculated for an isocaloric diet. Behavioural determinants were measured based on a literature review and classified into the Capability, Opportunity, Motivation Behaviour (COM-B) framework. Linear models, adjusted for socioeconomic characteristics, were run to identify the most prominent behavioural predictors of nutritional quality and GHGE of students' diets. Higher cooking skills (β = 0.38, p = 0.01) and health motives (β = 0.91, p < 0.001) were associated with higher nutritional quality. Greater environmental knowledge was linked to lower GHGE (β = -0.07, p = 0.002), while health and weight control motives were associated with higher GHGE (β = 0.26, p = 0.02 and β = 0.39, p < 0.001). Enhancing cooking skills and environmental knowledge could enable healthy and environmentally friendly diets, but health-based motives can act as a lever and as a barrier.

Drivers and Barriers Influencing Adherence to the Mediterranean Diet: A Comparative Study across Five Countries

Given the global decline in adherence to the Mediterranean Diet (MD), even within its native region, it is key to identify the factors influencing this trend to mitigate the negative health outcomes associated with westernized diets. To this end, 4025 individuals (49.6% women, 42.6 ± 14.2 y/o) from Greece, Italy, Morocco, Slovenia, and Tunisia remotely completed a series of measures assessing motives, attitudes, and psychosocial factors related to MD adherence, which was evaluated using the MEDAS questionnaire. The results suggested medium-to-low adherence across all countries, with the highest adherence in Italy and Morocco and the lowest in Slovenia. Structural equation modeling revealed that positive attitudes toward the healthiness of food were the strongest predictors of adherence, whereas picky eating was a significant negative predictor in all countries except Greece. Adherence to the MD was positively influenced by health motivations in Morocco and weight control in Slovenia and Greece, while sensory appeal negatively influenced adherence in Italy. Additionally, price and convenience were significant barriers in Tunisia and Greece, whereas a preference for local and seasonal foods promoted adherence in Morocco and Greece. Overall, our findings underscore the need for country-specific interventions and policies that address distinct local factors and motivations to ease favorable shifts in dietary patterns toward MD principles.

Consumer brand and category switching behaviors after food safety incidents: Factors and mechanisms

The excessive mold found in Three Squirrels' nuts and the clenbuterol abuse of Shuanghui are two infamous food safety incidents in China. We adopted push-pull-mooring theory to conduct a model and examined the factors influencing consumer short-term or long-term brand-switching or category-switching behaviors following the two food safety incidents. We employed multinomial logistic regression and structural equation modeling as tools to analyze 1027 valid questionnaires. The results, for the first time, revealed that perceived risk, alternative selectivity, alternative attractiveness, controllability attribution, and habits were key push, pull and mooring factors influencing Chinese consumers' brand and category switching from food brands under food safety crisis, and most importantly, that their influential paths differed greatly under the two food safety incidents, suggesting a different influential mechanism across two product categories (i.e., utilitarian food and hedonic food). These findings throw light on the predictors and mechanisms that affect consumer brand and category switching from food brands under food safety crisis and help associated food businesses develop more targeted and powerful crisis management and public relations strategies.

Analysis of coping capacities and cognitive biases of novice drivers-A questionnaire-based study

Coping capacity is a key aspect of driver-vehicle interaction when drivers observe and make decisions, and is of great importance for drivers. However, different drivers have different self-cognition and assess their driving abilities differently, especially for novice drivers. Based on questionnaire data, this study has investigated the coping capacities of drivers in both static environments and dynamic environments. With the ANOVA analysis method and the structural equation model (SEM), this study has verified the effects of gender and driving factors (driving years, driving frequency, driving time) on drivers' coping capacities based on drivers' self-assessment scores and mutual assessment scores. Drivers' self-assessment scores show significant effects of all factors on drivers' coping capacities, and drivers' mutual assessment scores show significant effects of all factors, excluding driving time, on drivers' coping capacities. Also, it has been found that all drivers in the driving year group have cognitive biases. It seems that first-year drivers are always overconfident with their driving skills, while drivers with a driving experience of more than three years usually score driving skills of themselves and other drivers most conservatively. With increased exposure to various traffic conditions, experienced drivers are more aware of their limitations in dealing with complex traffic situations, while novice drivers do not know their lack of capability to properly respond to any unexpected situation they could encounter.

Diabetes knowledge predicts HbA1c levels of people with type 2 diabetes mellitus in rural China: a ten-month follow-up study

Improving diabetes self-management (DSM) is facing real-world challenges among people with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) who have a low education level in resource-limited areas. This study aimed to investigate whether diabetes knowledge could predict glycemic levels in people with T2DM in rural China. This analytical cross-sectional study recruited 321 people with T2DM from eight villages by purposive sampling at baseline. After 10 months, 206 patients completed the follow-up survey and HbA1c tests, with a response rate of 64.17% (206/321). Multiple regression analysis was employed to explore the correlation between diabetes knowledge and HbA1c levels. The patient's diabetes knowledge was significantly negatively correlated with HbA1c levels before and after controlling for covariates in both hierarchical multiple regression and multiple logistic regression (p < 0.01). In addition, other influencing factors, including sex, age, marital status, employment status, income, and HbA1c levels at baseline, were also identified. Diabetes knowledge could predict HbA1c levels significantly among patients with low education levels in rural China. Therefore, interventions on improving diabetes knowledge need to be strengthened for patients in rural China so that they can improve their health outcomes and reduce the disease burden.

Validation of the Scale on Parental Feeding Behaviors (ECOPAL) for Caregivers of Mexican Children

Parental feeding practices can be crucial to preventing childhood obesity. This study aimed to validate a self-applicable instrument for evaluating the diverse parental feeding behaviors of Mexican caregivers based on the theoretical constructs of coercive control, structure, and autonomy support. The scale's content validity achieved significant values when assessed by expert judges, with moderate intensity in congruence (Kendall's W = 0.462; p = 0.000) and clarity (Kendall's W = 0.369; p = 0.001). The participants were 1185 Mexican adults (32.7 ± 7.6 years of age, 97% women, and 90% mothers) responsible for the main meal of at least one child (4.8 ± 3 years old). The data were subdivided randomly for an exploratory factor analysis (n = 581) and a confirmatory factorial analysis (n = 604). The first analysis grouped the items into 11 factors, with an accumulated variance of 63.9%. In the confirmatory analysis, a 10-factor model showed a better fit (CMIN = 1531.5, p < 0.001, CMIN/df = 2.20, RSEA = 0.045, CFI = 0.92, TLI, 0.91, and NFI = 0.87). The factors in this model were (1) the disposition of non-recommended foods, (2) nutritional education, (3) pressure to eat, (4) praise for healthy eating, (5) monitoring of consumption, (6) structured offer of fruits and vegetables, (7) consumption conditioning, (8) overt restriction, (9) guided choices, and (10) covert restriction. The Cronbach's alpha value was 0.816. Therefore, this scale presents good psychometric properties with which to evaluate the frequency of child caregivers' feeding behaviors in the context of ten different feeding practices in Mexico's urban areas and contributes to the knowledge of current practices in the Mexican population. It also evaluates changes resulting from future interventions that promote eating practices that favor the formation of healthy eating habits.

An exploration of what freshness in fruit means to consumers

Perceived freshness is a key determinant of consumers' food choices but remains an imprecisely defined concept. A comprehensive and consumer-centric definition of freshness appears to be lacking, and the present research was situated in this knowledge gap, seeking, in particular, to explore the complexity of freshness in consumers' minds. People from the USA (n = 2092) took part in an online survey and completed a text highlighting task. Herein, participants read a text that described different aspects of freshness and the technologies used to prolong freshness during storage. While reading, they used highlighting functions within the software to indicate text content that they liked/disliked or agreed/disagreed with. The combined results from text highlighting and responses to the open-ended question "Considering the fruit you eat, why is freshness important to you?" confirmed that freshness is a complex construct with multiple dimensions and suggested that the complexity of freshness extends from food in general to specific product categories (in the case of fruit and apples). Further, the findings showed that freshness is desired by consumers because fruit are perceived as healthier and better tasting. The findings revealed negative attitudes towards stored fruit among participants, but also indicated some acceptance of the fact that some storage was unavoidable. Results provide useful insights to the development for communication strategies to increase consumer acceptance of stored apples and fruits in general.

Nudging low-medium income mothers towards healthy child options in an online restaurant scenario

Helping mothers make the healthiest choices for their children when eating out can contribute to preventing the prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity, particularly in economically disadvantaged classes. Herein, we tested whether two different nudges (a default option and a social norm prompt) could guide low- and middle-income mothers towards healthier children's menu choices in a fictive restaurant setting and investigated the drivers of healthy child menu selection. A cross-sectional online survey was performed among 809 Italian mothers with children aged between 3 and 12 years, and a between-subjects design (control, nudge 1, and nudge 2) was applied. The findings revealed that both nudges had no significant effect on the number of healthy menu selections compared with the healthy choices made in the control condition. Furthermore, considering the entire sample, the results show that certain characteristics of a mother (e.g., authoritative parenting style) and child (younger age) duo increase the likelihood of the former selecting a healthy children's menu. Similarly, a positive correlation between the likelihood of choosing a healthy children's menu and the mother's involvement in the child's nutrition (meal preparation and weekly diet) was observed.

Is negative e-WOM more powerful? Multimodal data analysis on air passengers’ perception of COVID-19 safety measures

During the normalization stage of the COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control, the safety threats caused by improper epidemic prevention measures of airlines have become the primary concern for air passengers. Negative e-WOM related to safety perception obtained based on online multimodal reviews of travel websites has become an important decision-making basis for potential air passengers when making airline choices. This study aims to examine the relationship between potential air passengers’ negative safety perception and the usefulness of online reviews, as well as to test the moderating effect of review modality and airline type. It also further explores the effectiveness and feasibility of applying big data sentiment analysis to e-WOM management. To this end, the theoretical model of negative safety perception, review modality, and airline type affecting review usefulness was constructed. Then we select 10 low-cost airlines and 10 full-service airlines, respectively, according to the number of reviews sorted by the TripAdvisor website, and use crawling techniques to obtain 10,485 reviews related to COVID-19 safety of the above companies from December 2019 to date, and conduct safety perception sentiment analysis based on Python’s Textblob library. Finally, to avoid data overdispersion, the model is empirically analyzed by negative binomial regression using R software. The results indicate that (1) Negative safety perception significantly and negatively affects review usefulness, that is, extreme negative safety perception can provide higher review usefulness for potential air passengers. (2) Review modality and airline type have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between negative safety perception and review usefulness, in which multimodal reviews and full-service airlines both weakened the negative impact of negative safety perception on review usefulness. The theoretical model in this paper is both an extension of the application of big data sentiment analysis techniques and a beneficial supplement to current research findings of e-WOM, providing an important reference for potential air passengers to identify useful reviews accurately and thus reduce safety risks in online decision-making.

Consumer Preference Segments for Plant-Based Foods: The Role of Product Category

A survey of willingness to consume (WTC) 5 types of plant-based (PB) food was conducted in USA, Australia, Singapore and India (n = 2494). In addition to WTC, emotional, conceptual and situational use characterizations were obtained. Results showed a number of distinct clusters of consumers with different patterns of WTC for PB foods within different food categories. A large group of consumers did not discriminate among PB foods across the various food categories. Six smaller, but distinct clusters of consumers had specific patterns of WTC across the examined food categories. In general, PB Milk and, to a much lesser extent, PB Cheese had highest WTC ratings. PB Fish had the lowest WTC, and two PB meat products had intermediate WTC. Emotional, conceptual and situational use characterizations exerted significant lifts/penalties on WTC. No penalty or lifts were imparted on WTC by the situational use of ‘moving my diet in a sustainable direction’, whereas uses related to ‘when I want something I like’ and ‘when I want something healthy’ generally imparted WTC lifts across clusters and food categories. The importance of this research for the study of PB foods is its demonstration that consumers are not monolithic in their willingness to consume these foods and that WTC is often a function of the food category of the PB food.